Amateur Sports

This week, while problems with two of Charlotte’s major economic development deals held the spotlight, the City Council also considered entering a third. The council’s economic development committee met Thursday to discuss creating an amateur sports complex in east Charlotte. But after this week’s turmoil, there were plenty of skeptics.

Nearly a year after negotiations began with the city of Charlotte, the company aiming to redevelop Bojangles Arena into an amateur sports complex is still trying to secure financing, according to a staff update to the city council’s economic development committee Friday.

The city has been in discussions with the developer, GoodSports, since last December. Mayor Pro Tem Michael Barnes says the city is just performing due diligence.

A more than $70 million amateur sports complex proposed in east Charlotte has new question marks. The Charlotte Observer has reported the developer, Goodsports, has lost its private financing and the project is on hold. The city denies the claim. WFAE’s Ben Bradford joined All Things Considered Host Mark Rumsey to make sense of it.

A plan to turn Bojangles Coliseum and the area around it into an amateur sports complex will require an extra $12 million immediately, staff told city council today. Over the next decade, that amount could rise to over $50 million. Those costs are in addition to millions the council approved for the project in last year’s Capital Improvement Plan.

A request for $51 million of city money to rehab the Bojangles Coliseum was a bit surprising. The city has already approved $25 million to renovate the site. This new proposal is still just that, a proposal. But it left us wondering just what this additional money would be used for. So we turned to a real person and a talking document to find out.

An indoor, amateur sports complex and a small hotel would replace Bojangles Arena and Ovens Auditorium, under a private developer’s plan the City of Charlotte is considering. It’s the only proposal from a developer the city received, after allocating $25 million in its Capital Improvement Plan to redevelop the underused arena—and the declining area around it. WFAE’s Ben Bradford joined Morning Edition host Kevin Kniestedt to take a look at the proposal.

The City of Charlotte has put out a call for proposals to redevelop Bojangles’ Coliseum into an amateur sports center. The city has agreed to pay $25 million to upgrade the coliseum and buy land beside the property for parking.

The city is looking for a private developer to build a 150-room hotel and a sports facility that includes at least eight basketball courts that can be adapted to other uses.

Charlotte has a lot riding on professional sports: millions of tax dollars built an arena for the Bobcats, are helping construct a new home for Knights baseball Uptown and will likely renovate Panthers stadium, too. So does it surprise you to learn that more than half of the city's hotel room bookings each year are the result of amateur athletes?